[Mb-civic] The New American Militarism

[Michael Butler]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Reeeees at aol.com
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 16:40:57 EST
To: Reeeees at aol.com
Subject: (no subject)

The New American Militarism
by Paul Craig Roberts

Americans have been  betrayed. Sooner or later, Americans will realize that
they have been led to  defeat in a pointless war by political leaders who
they 
inattentively trusted.  They have been misinformed by a sycophantic
corporate 
media too mindful of  advertising revenues to risk reporting truths branded
unpatriotic by the  propagandistic slogan, "you are with us or against us."

What happens when  Americans wake up to their betrayal? It is too late to be
rescued from  catastrophe in Iraq, but perhaps if Americans can understand
how 
such a grand  mistake was made, they can avoid repeating it. In a
forthcoming 
book from Oxford  University Press, The New American Militarism, Andrew J.
Bacevich writes that we  can avoid future disasters by understanding how our
doctrines went wrong and by  returning to the precepts laid down by our
Founding 
Fathers, men of infinitely  more wisdom than those currently holding reins
of 
power.

Bacevich, West  Point graduate, Vietnam veteran, and soldier for 23 years,
is 
a true  conservative. He is an expert on U.S. military strategy and a
professor at  Boston University. He describes how civilian strategists
especially 
Albert  Wohlstetter and Andrew Marshall,­ not military leaders,
transformed a 
 strategy of deterrence that regarded war as a last resort into a strategy
of 
 naked aggression. The resulting "marriage of a militaristic cast of mind
with  utopian ends" has "committed the United States to waging an open-ended
war 
on a  global scale."

The greatest threat to the U.S. is not terrorists but the  neoconservative
belief, to which President Bush is firmly committed, that  American security
and 
well-being depend on U.S. global hegemony and impressing  U.S. values on the
rest of the world. This belief resonates with a patriotic  public. Bacevich
writes, "In the aftermath of a century filled to overflowing  with evidence
pointing to the limited utility of armed force and the dangers  inherent in
relying excessively on military power, the American people have  persuaded
themselves that their best prospect for safety and salvation lies with  the
sword."

If Americans persist in these misconceptions, America will  "share the fate
of all those who in ages past have looked to war and military  power to
fulfill 
their destiny. We will rob future generations of their rightful
inheritance. 
We will wreak havoc abroad. We will endanger our security at home.  We will
risk the forfeiture of all that we prize."

Bacevich understands  that the problem is not how to deal with terrorism but
how to deal with the  hubris, laden with catastrophe, that America is God's
instrument for bringing  history to its predetermined destination. Being
assigned such an exalted role  creates the delusion that America's virtue is
unquestionable and its use of  preemptive coercion is infallible, a delusion
that led 
to the "cakewalk war"  that would entrench democracy in the Middle East and
have the troops home in 90  days.

American hubris, which flows so freely from President Bush's mouth,
explains 
why half the U.S. population yawns over the U.S. slaughter of Iraqi
civilians and communist-style torture of Iraqi prisoners. The "cakewalk war"
is  now 
almost two years old and has claimed 10 percent of the U.S. occupation force
as casualties. Yet, the delusion persists that the U.S. is prevailing in
Iraq.

The new American militarism would be inconceivable, Bacevich  writes, "were
it not for the support offered by several tens of millions of
evangelicals." 
Books written about "militant Islam" could equally describe  militant
evangelical Christianity. How did a Christian doctrine of love and  peace
become an 
apology for war?

Bacevich explains that evangelicals,  aghast at Vietnam era protests of
America's war against "godless communism,"  turned to the military as the
repository of traditional American virtues. For  evangelicals, end-times
doctrines 
converged eschatology with national security.  Prophecies merged America's
fate 
with Israel's. Islam inherited the role of  godless
communism and became the target of the war against evil. America  emerged
with the "same immensely elastic permission to use force previously
accorded to 
Israel."

America's security and the well-being of the world  are threatened by
America's unwarranted belief in the efficacy of force. War is  ungovernable:
"The 
shattered reputations of generals and statesmen who presumed  to bring it
under 
control litter the 20th century. On those rare occasions when  war has
yielded 
a seemingly decisive outcome, as in 1918 or 1945, it has done so  only after
exacting a staggering price from victor and vanquished alike. Even  then, in
resolving one set of problems, 'good' wars have fostered resentments or
created 
temptations, leading as often as not to further conflict."

The  new American militarism has abandoned the Founding Fathers, deserted
the 
 Constitution, and unrestrained the executive. War is a first resort.
Militarism  is inconsistent with globalism and with American ideals. It will
end in 
abject  failure.

The world is a vast place. The U.S. has demonstrated that it  cannot impose
its will on a tiny part known as Iraq. American realism may yet  reassert
itself, dispel the fog of delusion, cleanse the body politic of the  Jacobin
spirit, and lead the world by good example. But this happy outcome will
require 
regime change in the U.S.
 
_http://antiwar.com/roberts/_ (http://antiwar.com/roberts/)


------ End of Forwarded Message